Originally this was a part of a post I made on the "ET needs attention" subject. A fair few people seemed to think that it didn't get enough attention there and would make a nice column of its own, and as there is a need for more columns and opinions in general I decided to post it once more.
The question at hand is if Enemy Territory is dead or not. Sure, I agree, in terms of being a profitable competitive game, Enemy Territory has been more alive, if it can even be said at all. But in terms of skill level in the game I strongly disagree with the vast majority who blindly mourns the fallen heroes (fairly few "fallen heroes" do it themselves, which is well pathetic to say the least) and refuses to accept and see that ET has evolved so much that the mentioned legends would need a lot of work to be at the top once again.
Enemy Territory is very much alive. Yeah, a few legends have left the game, but there is so much new talent, even though most of the older generation refuses to accept the fact. There will always be people who say that back in the old days grass used to be a brighter shade of green, the colour of sky was way deeper blue, the sun was shining warmer and that even food was more nutritious.
Frankly all the hype around teams like Dignitas, gunslingers or even Destination Skyline is becoming ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, those teams were very good in their own time and have earned the legendary status, but to say that the game is weaker now, merely because those teams aren't competing is a big bucket of utter bullshit.
The game has simply evolved so much. Take any of those teams at their prime and put them up against the offence of say Helix, riddla would tear their game apart all alone with his mortar. Or let them attack and make them face the perfectly shifting offensive defences of today's teams. We'd see full holds on maps we never imagined would be possible to defend for that long. It is hard to imagine what exactly can be done to improve the skill even further, but once someone figures it out it will be automatically implemented in the gameplay. I am sure that Enemy Territory continues to evolve and the teams that leave the scene today will do so possessing a lesser skill in Enemy Territory than tomorrow's stars will eventually achieve. That is simply how life goes.
And if anyone comes up and says "hey but those guys had godlike aim, something that hasn't been there since their departure" I'd just laugh, sure for that time the aim was great. But has it ever crossed your minds that perhaps back then not as much was needed to be so dominant? It is another subject if those aimers were more dominant then than today's aimers are in the current situation. But I am very sure that put the legends up against the likes of reload elps mystic and ferus and they would lose the 1on1-s.
Or lets talk about riflenaders, baah, how many really skilled riflenaders were there in the "glorious" days? I doubt many of them had half the skill pool of tricky supershots for example l6ng (I talk of him because I know his rifle tricks the best) does. How many of them were able to take down 2 in oasis within the first 5 seconds of the game as an attacker? How many of them were able to defend supplydepot gates from being planted all alone even when all 3 gates get near simultaneous yellow dynamites? Or how about being able to take down a mortar in oasis that is shooting from the most common position and be able to do so from either gun and in a matter of seconds granting more than enough time for a successful defuse. And those are just 3 examples of hundreds of trickshots a rifle can and should do and know how to do.
The art of spawnkilling has also evolved to distances that would have seemed impossible back in the "glorious" days. Today's artists have all the tricks the legends had but in addition the have their own and continue to come up with new ideas almost daily. And once more, the legends faced opponents that were not aware of that many spawnkilling opportunities and because of this did not know how to evade them. Today's teams however have seen it all throughout the history of ET so far and know how to act on such situations, which makes it harder for the spawnkillers to be successful. And yet we see air strikes taking down two three four players followed up with a great riflenade and a great crossfire set up in seconds to finish up the remains. And we see it in almost every game. Furthermore due to the variety of options in spawnkilling, it has become a psychological game where you need to read the opponents mind to do well. If you do not consider this more skilful than throwing an air strike on one or two certain places every 30 seconds in all games then you, dear reader, are one of those that I consider foolishly blind.
Trickjumping for instance has also evolved a great deal. I do not want to say that todays jumpers necessarily are better and are able to jump further or higher, but it could be the case as well. All of the additions such as ETPro and its upgrades have made it easier for players to get a stable fps which is important for good jumping on the quake3 engine. But all these upgrades that allow better jumping make changes to the gameplay and thus require more skill from a team to be dominant. Perhaps you recall times when walljump in oasis was considered to be a trickjump, something it certainly isn't nowadays. Pretty much everyone is able to do it and in multiple ways. In addition today's defences have to watch out for such things as a player jumping in to the axis base on Supply Depot 2 without any boosting, climb up the beach on Battery, jump into the base on Fuel Dump or in a combination of trickjumps on Radar be able to get from truck to fake radar from there to east radar from there back to fake radar and back to truck in a matter of less than 20 seconds. None of these jumps is a too new invention, but they are more commonly used now than they were before and new jumping and boosting tricks come out on a frequent basis. For the defence it requires more paying attention from different approaches and in the offence the skill is shown by being able to take advantage of every option the game offers.
Those players and teams were great. They would most likely still be in the top had they kept playing, but they didn't and for that reason the skill of the current teams is far greater than it ever was. Somehow I don't see as many claims of a superb soccer team from early 20th century with 2-3-5 (which were standard at that time) tactics being able to beat any given mediocre 4-4-2 team of today.
What I am trying to say is that the game is more skilled than ever before and has a lot more teams than it used to have back in its so called "glorious" era.
The game still is as great as ever and will be if people will stay interested in it. The only big thing ET lacks as of today is big tournaments.
"But team A or player B was in division 5 when I was king, they/he can't be skilled"
Yeah, so what? Not everyone started playing the game from day 1, not every team was given credit for what they deserved, but for what people in charge thought they deserve, not everyone played with enough motivation from the start and not every team had the perfect atmosphere from the start nor did every player find the right place in the right team in the first weeks.
If you feel related to the sentence at the start of this part of the column or if you have said it at some point, I feel sorry for you. First off I would like to enlighten you; You were not born being 6 feet tall, really. If you know what an encyclopaedia is(if not, try googleing it) try looking up two keywords "anatomy" and "evolution" the latter one has been kept away from you for a time too long. If after a brief introduction to the subject you still feel that you are able to come as you are and rock everyone, may I suggested paralympics in esport for mentally challenged?
In my opinion one of the key factors in the success of "rtcw2" is the situation in Enemy Territory by the time the new game comes out. But if ET won't last until the launch of "rtcw2" it will mean that the unique gamestyle is not interesting. And it also means that everyone was right all along not to support ET.
If ET does stay and the new game is similar to it we have legends right from the start, the top players of the final era and a huge bunch or returning legends from past games in the series. Those players will have fans from the start. Should it become at least a relatively big game, they will get more adorers each day. The public will find out about their history, the dominance in both ET and RtCW, the tales of gunslingers, DSky, Dignitas, e-star, u96d and parodia and will want to cheer for them in their comeback attempts. The common people need heroes.
None of this, however, will happen if the community keeps poisoning itself by destroying new stars before they get the chance to prove their worth and keeps crying out for fallen heroes.
NB! I respect a very big part of all the legendary players (everyone except the people from chapter "hi to evolution", those people I detest) and teams I talk about for what they have achieved and how dominant they were. I am not trying to and thank god am not able to take anything away from them. All I want to say is that the current stars get less credit than they deserve and that it's destroying the community and possibly the future of "rtcw2"
The question at hand is if Enemy Territory is dead or not. Sure, I agree, in terms of being a profitable competitive game, Enemy Territory has been more alive, if it can even be said at all. But in terms of skill level in the game I strongly disagree with the vast majority who blindly mourns the fallen heroes (fairly few "fallen heroes" do it themselves, which is well pathetic to say the least) and refuses to accept and see that ET has evolved so much that the mentioned legends would need a lot of work to be at the top once again.
Enemy Territory is very much alive. Yeah, a few legends have left the game, but there is so much new talent, even though most of the older generation refuses to accept the fact. There will always be people who say that back in the old days grass used to be a brighter shade of green, the colour of sky was way deeper blue, the sun was shining warmer and that even food was more nutritious.
Frankly all the hype around teams like Dignitas, gunslingers or even Destination Skyline is becoming ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, those teams were very good in their own time and have earned the legendary status, but to say that the game is weaker now, merely because those teams aren't competing is a big bucket of utter bullshit.
The game has simply evolved so much. Take any of those teams at their prime and put them up against the offence of say Helix, riddla would tear their game apart all alone with his mortar. Or let them attack and make them face the perfectly shifting offensive defences of today's teams. We'd see full holds on maps we never imagined would be possible to defend for that long. It is hard to imagine what exactly can be done to improve the skill even further, but once someone figures it out it will be automatically implemented in the gameplay. I am sure that Enemy Territory continues to evolve and the teams that leave the scene today will do so possessing a lesser skill in Enemy Territory than tomorrow's stars will eventually achieve. That is simply how life goes.
And if anyone comes up and says "hey but those guys had godlike aim, something that hasn't been there since their departure" I'd just laugh, sure for that time the aim was great. But has it ever crossed your minds that perhaps back then not as much was needed to be so dominant? It is another subject if those aimers were more dominant then than today's aimers are in the current situation. But I am very sure that put the legends up against the likes of reload elps mystic and ferus and they would lose the 1on1-s.
Or lets talk about riflenaders, baah, how many really skilled riflenaders were there in the "glorious" days? I doubt many of them had half the skill pool of tricky supershots for example l6ng (I talk of him because I know his rifle tricks the best) does. How many of them were able to take down 2 in oasis within the first 5 seconds of the game as an attacker? How many of them were able to defend supplydepot gates from being planted all alone even when all 3 gates get near simultaneous yellow dynamites? Or how about being able to take down a mortar in oasis that is shooting from the most common position and be able to do so from either gun and in a matter of seconds granting more than enough time for a successful defuse. And those are just 3 examples of hundreds of trickshots a rifle can and should do and know how to do.
The art of spawnkilling has also evolved to distances that would have seemed impossible back in the "glorious" days. Today's artists have all the tricks the legends had but in addition the have their own and continue to come up with new ideas almost daily. And once more, the legends faced opponents that were not aware of that many spawnkilling opportunities and because of this did not know how to evade them. Today's teams however have seen it all throughout the history of ET so far and know how to act on such situations, which makes it harder for the spawnkillers to be successful. And yet we see air strikes taking down two three four players followed up with a great riflenade and a great crossfire set up in seconds to finish up the remains. And we see it in almost every game. Furthermore due to the variety of options in spawnkilling, it has become a psychological game where you need to read the opponents mind to do well. If you do not consider this more skilful than throwing an air strike on one or two certain places every 30 seconds in all games then you, dear reader, are one of those that I consider foolishly blind.
Trickjumping for instance has also evolved a great deal. I do not want to say that todays jumpers necessarily are better and are able to jump further or higher, but it could be the case as well. All of the additions such as ETPro and its upgrades have made it easier for players to get a stable fps which is important for good jumping on the quake3 engine. But all these upgrades that allow better jumping make changes to the gameplay and thus require more skill from a team to be dominant. Perhaps you recall times when walljump in oasis was considered to be a trickjump, something it certainly isn't nowadays. Pretty much everyone is able to do it and in multiple ways. In addition today's defences have to watch out for such things as a player jumping in to the axis base on Supply Depot 2 without any boosting, climb up the beach on Battery, jump into the base on Fuel Dump or in a combination of trickjumps on Radar be able to get from truck to fake radar from there to east radar from there back to fake radar and back to truck in a matter of less than 20 seconds. None of these jumps is a too new invention, but they are more commonly used now than they were before and new jumping and boosting tricks come out on a frequent basis. For the defence it requires more paying attention from different approaches and in the offence the skill is shown by being able to take advantage of every option the game offers.
Those players and teams were great. They would most likely still be in the top had they kept playing, but they didn't and for that reason the skill of the current teams is far greater than it ever was. Somehow I don't see as many claims of a superb soccer team from early 20th century with 2-3-5 (which were standard at that time) tactics being able to beat any given mediocre 4-4-2 team of today.
What I am trying to say is that the game is more skilled than ever before and has a lot more teams than it used to have back in its so called "glorious" era.
The game still is as great as ever and will be if people will stay interested in it. The only big thing ET lacks as of today is big tournaments.
"But team A or player B was in division 5 when I was king, they/he can't be skilled"
Yeah, so what? Not everyone started playing the game from day 1, not every team was given credit for what they deserved, but for what people in charge thought they deserve, not everyone played with enough motivation from the start and not every team had the perfect atmosphere from the start nor did every player find the right place in the right team in the first weeks.
If you feel related to the sentence at the start of this part of the column or if you have said it at some point, I feel sorry for you. First off I would like to enlighten you; You were not born being 6 feet tall, really. If you know what an encyclopaedia is(if not, try googleing it) try looking up two keywords "anatomy" and "evolution" the latter one has been kept away from you for a time too long. If after a brief introduction to the subject you still feel that you are able to come as you are and rock everyone, may I suggested paralympics in esport for mentally challenged?
In my opinion one of the key factors in the success of "rtcw2" is the situation in Enemy Territory by the time the new game comes out. But if ET won't last until the launch of "rtcw2" it will mean that the unique gamestyle is not interesting. And it also means that everyone was right all along not to support ET.
If ET does stay and the new game is similar to it we have legends right from the start, the top players of the final era and a huge bunch or returning legends from past games in the series. Those players will have fans from the start. Should it become at least a relatively big game, they will get more adorers each day. The public will find out about their history, the dominance in both ET and RtCW, the tales of gunslingers, DSky, Dignitas, e-star, u96d and parodia and will want to cheer for them in their comeback attempts. The common people need heroes.
None of this, however, will happen if the community keeps poisoning itself by destroying new stars before they get the chance to prove their worth and keeps crying out for fallen heroes.
NB! I respect a very big part of all the legendary players (everyone except the people from chapter "hi to evolution", those people I detest) and teams I talk about for what they have achieved and how dominant they were. I am not trying to and thank god am not able to take anything away from them. All I want to say is that the current stars get less credit than they deserve and that it's destroying the community and possibly the future of "rtcw2"
